> BTW, we just discussed this subject with my husband, he named two classical examples of recursion - factorials (by definition! :) and Fibbonaci (? how to spell correctly?) numbers.

Both have simple non-recursive definitions too. But, yes, they are usually defined using a recursive formula.
Interesting enough, they are both good examples for where to not use recursive solutions.

The correct spelling is "Fibonacci".

> Determinant is also recursive by defenition, but in this case the Gaussian elimination should work much faster than the recursion. However the recursion code is simpler and closer to math definition.

Yup.

Vlad